The last seven weeks have been challenging for Hillcrest Thrift Store in Platte City. After closing March 17 due to COVID-19 the store reopened to the public recently with the caveat that customers wear masks, use hand sanitizer before entering the store and maintain six-feet distance from other shoppers and staff.
Losing seven weeks worth of revenue has been difficult but Lou Warner, director of thrift operations for Platte County, said staff is only interested in complying with the CDC, state and health departments to keep people safe.
“It has been so difficult to figure out what all we have to do, what they’re recommending us to do, what’s the best thing to do and what’s the safest thing to do so it’s just been the joke around here that nothing is certain and everything is dangerous, Warner said. “But we’re excited to be open again and able to raise money again.”
In a time when people need the thrift store’s services more than ever because of loss of jobs due to the impact of the virus and with the possibility that more and more people will be affected, staff at Hillcrest are preparing for many more in need of temporary assistance.
The thrift store, along with two others in Platte County, is a part of Hillcrest Platte County, a Christian ministry that’s been helping local people since 2002. A majority of local churches also participate in the ministry. The churches refer people in need to the ministry and church members help by volunteering.
“The ministry’s Blessings Program is kind of an eviction prevention program,” Warner said.”We help churches manage their benevolence funding to a certain degree. A church will have benevolence funding so they have money they can contribute for certain situations and we created this program and said why don’t they transfer some of that money over to us and we will match whatever they give us so we can double the financial impact.”
The program, which was created four years ago, is strictly a private referral program through area churches. Since it began, the program has prevented more than 400 evictions.
The thrift store’s mission is to provide transitional housing to address homelessness in Platte County. They also focus on the insecurely housed, meaning a person is either on their way to homelessness or they have reached homeless status.
“We also have another program where we help families with their bills to keep them from going into homelessness and with that would come budget counseling that is a private service we offer through partnerships with primarily churches in the community,” Warner said. “A church might have a person in their congregation who’s in some financial trouble and they refer them to us and we will then work with them and see if we can figure out how they got into their situation. Then we might help them with bills if they qualify and we can keep them from getting evicted. But the churches must recommend the people to us.”
There’s also follow-up budget counseling that comes with the program. The ministry has 35 apartments in Platte County that are managed either through an adult homeless housing program or young adult homeless housing program for people 17 to 24 years of age.
“The young adult program in my opinion is more exciting because that’s hitting high schoolers,” Warner said. “We’re partners with the local high schools so they identify a homeless high-schooler and now we have a program that they can come and stay with us and the program can last as long as 18 months and helps them with job skills, mentoring, transportation issues and career development.”
About 95 percent of the people who graduate from what staff call ‘budget boot camp’ are able to sustain a place on their own and they’re accountable for every dime they make.
Since there are organizations in the KC area that provide shelter for the homeless, the ministry focuses on the working homeless.
“Really it’s more like your next door neighbor since so many people are living paycheck-to-paycheck it doesn’t take much, like a medical event where you can get into some financial trouble and if you don’t have a community or some savings to help you, you can end up getting evicted or even worse, but you do have to be working full time to get into our program,” Warner said. “We have fully furnished apartments for them to live in and we have a food pantry.”
The help provided by the ministry allows people to pay off their debts and save enough to get back on their feet with the help of budget counselors to learn how to manage money.
Since there are not a lot of youth programs in the Kansas City area addressing those segments of the community, a new aspect of the program involves foster kids who have aged out of the system. Young people can apply online to get in touch with the housing services administrators for the ministry and applications are available at their website, hillcrestplatte.org.
“The thrift stores serve as somewhat of a lighthouse in the communities,” Warner said. “Maybe they have heard something about Hillcrest but they don’t know how to find out about our services or how we can help them but they know the Hillcrest Thrift Store so they’ll come in and ask us and then we refer them to housing. The easiest way is to get them online to fill out an application and then set up an interview. Our case manager will sit down with them and see if they are a good candidate for the program and see if they can qualify for the program.”
All the money raised at the thrift store goes back into those services provided to the community. The thrift stores have some private donors that help, but the stores take no money from the government.
“We can get privately funded grants but we’re not interested in government grants because they can sometimes limit how you run your programs and we’ve had some situations where we can help somebody and they were a perfect candidate for a program but if we had a government building we couldn’t help them because they might make a little too much money,” Warner said. “It happened one time with a school teacher years ago who had a special needs child. He made good money but he lost his job, had medical events with his wife and was living in his car. He was homeless and we just needed to get him back up on his feet and give him a safe, secure place to live.
“At that time one of the buildings was subsidized with government money and they had a restriction like that and they couldn’t help him but we were able to help him because we don’t take government money and we don’t have restrictions like the government.”
Warner said a lot of people can relate to what the ministry does because most people have situations in life where they’re barely making ends meet. He also emphasized the importance of community and teaching people who are struggling how to reach out and ask for help.
“They’re sinking and they don’t even know how to reach out and get help,” Warner said.
The thrift store staff is made up of about 90 percent volunteers and Warner said the stores are very dependent on them in order to save money that will go toward the mission of helping those in need.
Warner hopes volunteers can get acclimated back into the store this week. Since many of them are retired and in at-risk age groups he is leaving it entirely up to them when they feel comfortable enough to return to work. With the six-feet distancing there will be a limit on how they will be used throughout operations.
“It’s very challenging in managing donations but it’s by far the most rewarding work I’ve ever done just because it’s amazing to see volunteers take time out of their schedules to give to a bigger cause than themselves,” Warner said.
For retirees looking to keep their minds sharp, to stay active and to feel a new sense of purpose Warner said working as a volunteer is time well spent.
“It takes hundreds of volunteers every month to help us do what we have to do,” Warner said. “We’ve grown a lot and part of that is cultivating a community inside the thrift stores. We’ve had women who have lost their spouses and have been deeply depressed and they come in and say, ‘this place saved my life.’ To get someone connected and involved with people is critical.”
After the recent reopening of their docks, the thrift store has seen an upswing in donations after the seven-week lockdown. One of Hillcrest’s sister thrift stores saw so many donations after reopening they had to close for a weekend because they ran out of storage room.
The stores are also holding all contributions for three days in a container before sorting and placing in the sales area as a precaution due to the virus.
Ken Pratt Trucking in Platte City donated a 54-foot container for the thrift store to use to help with storing donations.
“We’re very grateful to them,” Warner said. “We called and told them our problem and the owner, Ken Pratt, dropped off the container for us. He is letting us use it indefinitely until we can get through this. It’s possible for the virus to live on some things for up to three days and that’s why we decided to wait three days before we bring it in. Whether we really need to do that I don’t know but we’re still doing it to be safe.”
Thrift store hours have changed to 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday and 11 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. To drop off donations, hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Warner said watching families’ lives change for the better with the help of the thrift store’s programs is very rewarding.
“We know that the Blessings Program, the eviction prevention program and the thrift shops are kind of a mechanism in our overall organization to keep people from falling off the cliff, Warner said. “We’re addressing it when they fall and we’re also trying to keep them from falling. If someone gets into trouble we want people to know how to get a hold of us at Hillcrest Platte County. The main number is 587-9037. We are a 501 c 3 non-profit.”